


compendium;

by arouria



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, LadyNoir - Freeform, Marichat, Shorts, adrienette - Freeform, also probs, idk anymore here's this mess lmao, ladrien
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 04:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6269059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arouria/pseuds/arouria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We aren't here to change fate," She speaks her words like a prayer and he his hangs heart like a tragedy, "We're here to change history."</p><p>.</p><p>It's whatever you need it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. convention;

**Author's Note:**

> welcome, you seem to have stumbled upon my newest personal natural disaster of a fanfiction. if you're wondering what exactly this is, you're free to join the club, of which I am the president, because i don't have diddly squat of an idea what's happening here. think of this as my notebook, where I throw all my half-scribbled half-baked and usually half-finished ideas just to have them all together in once place. some are drabbles, some are longer then that, most are really just a mess. honestly? it's whatever you need it to be. 
> 
> so is it what you were looking for? maybe not. is it kind of an adventure in of it's own? definitely.  
> and so, enjoy whatever is to come my friends,
> 
> -ria

“Why are we here, Chat?”

Her voice no longer kilters like it’s on the brink of collapse-- it’s vibrations are long dead and airless, like the shuffling of shattered glass, like it’s already careened off the edge.  

His pulse eats away at the back of his throat and threatens to tear straight through his veins, he hopes he doesn’t sound as defeated as he feels, he knows there’s no point in trying to hide it.

“Why are we ever here, My Lady?” His eyes drift away from hers, almost involuntarily shifting over the sultry haze of the city lights below them, down the cracks in abandoned alleyways and ghosting around the neon edges of silhouettes illuminated in the off-tone urban darkness. She watches him like one would watch a wild animal, beaten and broken and scarred from countless fights and she remembers  _ all of them _ , every broken bone and war-torn snarl brought on by a battle they never asked for. She takes one step closer,  _ two _ , and she’s on the ledge beside him wondering what it would be like to freefall into this battlescar of a city that has left them in ruins once again. She can almost convince herself they’re standing on top of the world-- she thinks that once they might have been. These days they’re hardly standing at all.

His eyes fall back to her face, as they always do, and he is reminded once again that the only reason he fights for this god forsaken city is because she does too.

“What would you do if I told you that I loved you?” He says, mostly just to say something other than silence. Her eyes flash back to his so quickly he wonders if they ever even left.

“I’d jump,” She answers, extending a single leg out over the edge into nothingness, a challenge, a promise, a compromise.

“Would you survive the fall?” He echos, trying to convince himself they weren’t just words said in the silence.

A final time she tears her gaze from the city’s lights to find the ones in his eyes, and that hollowed out ghost of a smile strains on her lips as she plants both feet firmly on the ground and waits for the floor to fall through, “I’ll never know.”

His eyes flutter closed and even after all these years she still speaks her lies like a pray against his soul. The abstract idea of a smile that carves itself out the slighted corners of his mouth is something she hasn’t seen in years-- or perhaps it’s been centuries. 

“I’m glad,” He says, the lights flicker out.

And she knows.


	2. complications;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end of the line has never been her favorite place to be.

 

 

* * *

  
“Chat Noir. Put me down.”

He looks at her like she’d just suggested he eat his own foot.

“Uh, Princess? Are you _crazy_? There’s an akuma on a rampage out there, one who would be all too happy to add you to his little entourage of mind-controlled minions. I’m _also_ like 85% sure your ankle is broken, so the answer to that one is going to be a big resounding ‘ _No_ ’.”

“Chat.” She repeats, tone flat as she narrows her gaze towards the room at the far end of the hall. There’s something about the way her eyes flash that screams _power_ , and the intensity of its familiarity sends a primal shiver ricocheting down his spine.

“Put me down. Now.”

“But—”

“ _Please_.”

He relents, reluctantly easing her down on her good leg, keeping a steady hand pinned to her waist as she tests the weight of her injured ankle with a sharp hiss of pain.

“Marinette you shouldn’t—”

“Listen to me.” She whispers and he instantly snaps his jaw shut.

“I’m about to do something I’m definitely going to regret,” She turns her head over her shoulder just in time to catch the flash of fear in his gaze, and she smiles wistfully at the inherent goodness of his heart.

_In or out of costume, he always has your back. Always has your best interests in mind. For you, he’d do anything, and you know, you know it’s always been you._

She wonders why she suddenly feels like crying.

“I’m sorry, Kitty.”

She brushes a hand against the flat metallic surface of her earring, cool and comforting and one of the only absolute constants in her aching disaster of a life.

She breathes, he doesn’t.

“ _Spots on_.”

* * *


	3. confrontation;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she's never felt more powerful, holding the weight of existance between her fingertips

Marinette has had enough.

She’s been captured, beaten, overlooked and forced to play on the sidelines. She’s been left powerless and to her own devices, weak and without a plan in the face her greatest enemy. 

She’s seen her best friend take a hit that should have killed her. 

It had almost killed _him_.

And she. Is. Done.

She’s moving without really realizing it-- feet carrying her out of the darkness of the sidelines where she had stood _waiting_ for defeat and straight into something bigger, back to the part of her that does not cower. That does not waver.

That does not lose.

Distantly, she hears the voice of her partner in the darkness, begging her-- _Don’t come any closer--_ pleading,-- _Just run! Please!_ \-- but she hardly registers a word.

Tikki’s words rattle around in her head like television static, bouncing and banging and demanding every inch of her attention all at once;

_You’re wrong, Marinette. You are not just Ladybug. Nor is Ladybug just you. She is not something you become, she is something you_ **_are_ ** _._

Her footsteps echo in the dampness of the cellar floor, the downpour of rainwater pounding on the window panes and leaking through the decade old cracks in the ceiling tiles. Chat’s warnings become more urgent in their demands as she finds herself drawn in closer and closer, but his pleas fall on deaf ears as she moves to stand protectively in front of her fallen partner.

Because now, finally, _finally,_ she understands.

Hawkmoth sneers at her presence, dark violet eyes flashing in irritation and discontempt.

“Begone girl! I have no business with rejects!” The older man growls, swinging his staff threateningly in attempt to ward her off. She hears Chat hiss in possessive warning behind her, and her heart swells for his unwavering dedication despite herself.

“I said _move_ , child!” Hawkmoth shouts, irrationally angered by her refusal to budge, he raises his cane to strike her out of the way--

“ _No_.”  

\--and the blow never comes. 

Marinette tightens her vicegrip on the cane and snaps the weapon from her attacker’s grasp, twisting the heavy jeweled end back under the nose of it’s owner.

“Wha-- How--”

“I have had quite enough!” Marinette shouts, jabbing the staff forward and forcing the older man to take a shaky step behind him.

“Today,” Her cerulean eyes flash in unrestrained rage,

“I have been _chased_ ,” She presses forward and her opponent stumbles back in shock.

“I have been _beaten_ ,” Another step. Another shaky breath.

“I have been rendered _powerless_ ,” She stops. Nobody breathes.

“And I have seen my _best friend_ put on the brink of death.” Somewhere behind her, she registers Chat hiss in a breath, like his entire world has stopped spinning in the span of a single word. She hears him whisper her name.

His name _for_ _her_.

“All because of _you_.” She adds, quieter, just for _him_ , the man who has caused so much pain and fear and anger and _hurt_ , the man who now stares her down with that same anger and fear tangled deep in his violent, violet eyes.

“And now,” Marinette suddenly flings the staff across the room--where it cracks with a sickening thud against the far wall. Hawkmoth’s eyes widen in excitement like he’s gained some sort of golden opportunity to take the upper hand along with the loss of his weapon.

Marinette _laughs_.

  
“Now, you _pay_.”


End file.
